“What did he teach?” I said.
“Life,” Mr. Palmerston said. “Life!” He began to sweat, and his face was like the night sky with a moon reflected on his cheek-bone. “I was very ignorant,” he said.
Marius ordered lunch with a professional assurance.
“And now he is coming back to teach us again,” Mr. Palmerston said. “I am very glad. In my country he is a much needed man, a very much needed man indeed.”
“What do you do?” I said to Marius.
Mr. Palmerston waited for him to reply and then answered for him. “He does everything,” he said. “Everything. He is the goose that lays the golden egg.” He smiled dazzlingly and then leaned towards Marius. “I intend nothing personal,” he said. His concern was enormous, as if he were going to cry.
“Nothing,” Marius said.
“Oh he is a great benefactor. Great indeed. He gave me a kitchen for my church.” Mr. Palmerston began to mop his face with a crimson handkerchief. “And a great deal besides. For my school, and for my poor people who do not trust. There is so much to be done.” I could not understand why he was sweating when he must have been accustomed to the heat. It was as if he were being roasted. “It is quite frightening,” he said.
“It is for you it is frightening,” Marius said.
“No, I do no more than follow my nose. And if I sneeze, I am a priest, and I have my handkerchief.” He waved it comically in front of his face. “It is for you I am afraid, if you catch cold.” Tears came into his eyes so that he could dab at them with his sleeve.
“Don’t worry,” Marius said.
“Worry?” He said. “Of course I worry. See!” He held out above the tablecloth a hand that was trembling.
We watched his heavy, heavy hand with the backs of the fingers knobby like wood and then he turned it over so that we were looking at his palm. It was pink as if it had been scraped and bleeding. “Tell me,” he said, “do you go to Church?”
At first I did not realize that he was talking to me, and then I said “No.”
“Oh I am sorry,” he said. “I am so terribly sorry.” He turned his huge agonized face towards me so that it was like a dark pool in which my own was drowning.
“You are the only clergyman who has ever asked me that,” I said.
“Oh,” he said. “Oh, I see.”
He sat there with a crimson handkerchief against his heart like the corner of a sunset. He stared at me. “You have wanted to be asked?”
“I have expected it.”
“How extraordinary,” he said. “How extraordinary indeed.”
“Isn’t it a serious question?”
“Certainly it is serious.”
“Then why is it that in this country no one asks it?”
He looked at the plate of food that had been placed in front of him and he pushed it a few inches away on his tablecloth and he turned his glass upside down beside it. “You say that in this country it is not serious? Not serious enough? What is it that is not serious?”
“The people who go to church and the people who do not are part of the same thing. They like having enemies. The people who talk about love do not love, and those people who talk about hell do not dissuade their neighbours from going there. The people who are supposed to intercede on behalf of the world have something to do when the world is going to damnation.”
“Intercession! You are not talking about intercession!”
“About action, then, if intercession is useless.”
“And if it isn’t!”
“You can see that it is.”
“Oh!” Mr. Palmerston said.
He closed his eyes and his lips were moving as if he were talking to himself. He sat down with his hands folded like an enormous Buddha. Then his whisper became audible. “I have never before heard it called not serious. Never before in the world.” He opened his eyes so that the pool rippled across its surface. “So you would judge us then?”
“I judge nothing, I say that you fail.”
“You can say that about no one!”
“I will say it about myself and when others do not say it I will wait for them.”
“We say it every day of our lives!”
“Then why are you not more miserable? I tell you that you should be miserable, misery is your prerogative, and yet misery is the one thing you despise. If you despised your failures you would be more serious.”
“You put everything upside down, it is the opposite that has always been said . . . ”
“And it is the opposite that you have always known was not true. Once the world attacked you from behind, it attacked you because you made a virtue of poverty and simplicity and that was what you knew how to answer. Now the world has gone past you and you are still looking backwards to present yourselves as worldly to a world that is not there, now the world looks back on you and calls you frivolous because your back is turned to it and your back is all it sees. If you turned then you would not be able to be so glib, you would not be able each day to forget your responsibility in the joke of being subtle and disarming. The world has gone away from you because you have forgotten your responsibility to it, you may not have forgotten your responsibility to God but you have forgotten your responsibility to your neighbour. And if you remembered you would not smile!”
Mr. Palmerston pushed his chair back from the table with a screeching sound on the floor like an animal, and then he lumbered forwards onto his hands so that I thought he was ill. Then he went down on his knees and I saw he was praying. In the middle of the restaurant he knelt while the talking like the ceasing of canaries drained away and in the silence he was motionless like a dying bull. Marius and I looked away from him and nobody moved and then he struggled to his feet with a huge motion like a camel and he swayed towards the door through the awkward eyes and went through it and was gone. I sat for a few moments but Marius did not say anything so I left my food and followed him. I could not see him in the street.
Marius had come out after me. “Don’t worry,” he said.
“Worry?” I felt sure I was mad. It was extraordinary how Mr. Palmerston had disappeared so quickly.
“There is nothing to worry about.”
“Of course there is nothing to worry about!” I was furious that he should know how much it meant to me.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
We began to walk aimlessly away from the restaurant. “Have you paid the bill?” I said.
We walked again. The afternoon was running like a defeated army. I could not imagine why I had felt so confident in the night.
“You find all this odd?” he said.
“Yes,” I said. Annabelle and Mr. Palmerston had run, but it was I who had been defeated. Marius maddened me.
“It is of no significance,” he said.
“What isn’t?”
“Mr. Palmerston. He does things like that. I thought it might seem peculiar.”
“Not a bit.”
“Good. He is emotional, you see, not like an Englishman. I expect he has gone to pray for you.”
“To pray for me.”
“Probably. You talked about intercession.”
“This is crazy,” I said. Then, remembering Annabelle and Father Manners, “You talk of Mr. Palmerston as if you were ashamed of him.”
“Do I?” He seemed surprised.
“Yes. Why don’t you want me to worry?”
“Because it does no good.”
“What do you mean by good?”
“There are others who do the worrying,” he said.
“Do you realize that everything you say seems insane?” I said.
“Probably. I am not good at talking.”
“What are you good at?”
“Not much,” he said, smiling.
I remembered the time before when I had attacked him. Then we had been passionate and something had come of it. Now we did not seem to be hearing each other at all. Marius was full of a cheery humility that made communication impo
ssible. He was like a knowledgeable schoolmaster trying to pretend to be as stupid as his pupil.
“What do you mean by the others who do the worrying?” I said.
“I mean it’s no good being anxious about oneself.”
“I’m not, I’m anxious about you.”
“Thank you.”
I wanted to say, “You’re welcome,” but I thought he might take it seriously. Instead I asked, “Do you know how much you have changed?”
“I expect so.”
“Do you remember saying that the church was no good?”
“Yes.”
“And now?”
“I didn’t know anything about it then.”
“So everything that you said last year you would now deny?”
“No, I have just gone on from there, the seed grows slowly, and is often not discerned.”
“The seed that others are anxious about?”
“Yes,” he said. He seemed pleased.
“Now you’re like a gardening advertisement,” I said.
He still smiled. “We always talked in images,” he said.
“Did we?” I thought, suddenly, how awful we must have sounded. Then I remembered that to Annabelle, only an hour ago, I had argued that we had said the same things then as we were saying now. This was true of Marius, too. It was I who was contradicting myself. “I know that I am crazy too,” I said.
“That’s all right.”
“It’s not what you say that I don’t understand, it’s the way that you say it.”
“What way?” He again seemed surprised.
“So complacent. If you don’t worry about yourself how do you ever get anywhere?”
“By doing things. By worrying about others.”
“By being crafty?” I remembered Annabelle’s father.
“It is as if there was a war on. When you know there is a war you naturally act differently from the way you would act if you didn’t. It is useless worrying about yourself in a war.”
“What is this war?”
“What we have always talked about. What we have always fought in, too, I think, except that once I didn’t know what we were fighting. Now I do and I see things in terms of it. Perhaps that is why I sound odd.”
“Yes. Soldiers never know why they are fighting.”
“Don’t they?”
“They treat everyone as if they were already dead.”
“Perhaps they do.” His eyes flashed at me.
“As if they were dead themselves,” I said.
We had by this time reached the door of Alice’s house. On the steps he stopped, as if he had remembered something. He still had the knowledgeable look on his face. “I forgot,” he said. “Annabelle is with Alice this afternoon.”
“Annabelle?” I said. I wondered if he would not go in because I was there. I felt that he was even capable of knowing what had happened between Annabelle and me that morning. Then I remembered what had happened between her and him. “What is Annabelle doing with Alice?” I said.
“What? Just seeing her. I don’t think I should go in at the moment, perhaps.”
“All right,” I said. We walked away again. I was beyond even being surprised at his calmness about Annabelle, although I felt, with a shock, that there was something uncanny about it.
“I wonder if you would be very kind and do something for me,” he said.
“Of course.” He seemed embarrassed, and I thought he was going to ask me something about Annabelle.
“I wonder if you would very kindly put me up in your room for a short while until I go home. I remember staying with you before, and I will only be sleeping there.”
“Of course,” I said. “You are leaving Alice’s?”
“Yes, I think so.” I did not ask why. It seemed extraordinary that he should not then have preferred to go to a hotel. “That is really very kind of you,” he said.
We stopped. I felt that I should leave him, but there was an awkwardness that held us. “You are going away soon?” I said.
“Yes. I saw in the papers to-day that there has been trouble in my island.”
“Trouble?”
“Rioting. I must get back for it.”
“Will we ever see you again?”
“I hope so,” he said.
“You all seem to be intent on killing yourselves.”
“Didn’t we say a long time ago that we were already dead?” he said, flashing his eyes again at me.
I said good-bye to him. As I turned to go he stopped me; and then, almost formally, with great embarrassment again, he said, “I must thank you for what you did for my wife before she died, you cannot know how much it meant to us, I am sorry I have not said this before to you, but I want to thank you now and tell you how important I think it was. Perhaps I have to thank you for many things.”
“No,” I said. “No.” I found myself as embarrassed as he.
“That is why I tell you not to worry,” he said.
He turned to go. I did not understand him, I did not know why I should not worry, but I was filled with such a peculiar remorse that I found myself running after him, saying, “Marius, tell me, am I a lunatic?”
“No,” he said, “surely, I don’t think so at all.”
When I got back to my room I found a message from Peter asking me to ring him up. I did so. He was out.
I sat on the edge of the bed. I thought: It would have been easier if Marius had said I was mad.
All confidence had gone. I could not remember it. Marius had talked about a war, and if there was war then I was a refugee and not a participant. I was lost, bewildered—a man wandering up a road with his belongings left behind him.
The road was crawling as if with ghosts. The armies went past, heedless, in a different direction. What war? The war between good and evil, light and darkness—was there really a world of which I knew nothing? A world in which a war was being fought by people to whom it was the only reality, who marched and acted and who in the intervals could afford to be frivolous because frivolity is part of war, the jokes of serious people are part of their armoury. If the war was true, the world of which I knew nothing, then I could forgive them their jokes. But I was still a fugitive, in the wrong direction.
I rang up Peter again. This time he answered. As I listened to his voice the road thickened until it was difficult to keep up on the surface.
“I had to tell you,” he said, “it was really most extraordinary. I have been talking to Father Jack, you know, like you suggested, we went on from where we left off at breakfast, and he says he absolutely agrees with me, agrees with me entirely, that it’s all right for me to be as I am, to go on as I am, don’t you think that’s odd? I said that faith seemed nonsense to me, all the contradictions and so on, and he said, yes, of course, to some people it does; and I said Is that all right then? And he said Yes, indeed it is; and then I said about just sticking to right and wrong, and my conscience, or whatever it is, and he said, Good, that’s perfect, and gave me a pat on the back. Don’t you think that’s odd?”
“He told you not to worry?” I said.
“Yes, exactly, he is really a most sensible man, he understood me directly, he has an extraordinary faculty for knowing what I mean, which is more than most people do. Isn’t it funny? Perhaps his racket’s all right after all, perhaps it’s all quite proper. These priests are really far less bigoted than one thinks.”
“Did he talk about a war?”
“What war?”
“Nothing. Marius talks about a war.”
“Oh that, yes, that’s all about the spirit, it is very complicated, I don’t understand a word.”
“What spirit?”
“But that doesn’t matter either, you see, because everyone’s got this spirit, apparently, even me—isn’t it funny?—and we battle like anything.”
“How the devil can one battle without being in an army?”
“But that’s just it, one fights the devil, people do it in different ways, Father
Jack says so, his way is not better than anyone else’s.”
“He said that?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“He did, so that makes his racket just an ordinary one, like any of the others.”
“I think he’s mad.”
“Why? It makes it all right for you and me.”
“I don’t want it to be all right.”
“You can’t have it both ways. What’s wrong with it?”
“I don’t believe a word that any of them say.”
“It seems all right to me. And it’s one in the eye for Annabelle.”
“Why?”
“She won’t like it at all.”
“It was better when they thought us crazy.”
“I’m quite happy,” he said. I rang off.
I went back to my bed. I was in the ditch now, with the ghosts of the road on top of me. If everything was in terms of war then all was fair in terms of the war, and they were capable of anything. Truth became propaganda, love became defence-work, actions might be camouflage or bluff. Looking back on the afternoon it seemed that Marius might have meant anything by asking if he could stay with me, Annabelle might have meant anything by visiting Alice, Father Manners might have meant anything by talking to Peter. My suspicions rose in a body until I was suffocated by what I did not understand. I found that I had even lost the power of introspection, since I was as suspicious of myself as of others. Nothing was real—the chairs and tables might be phantoms—the world was haunted by a world that was not there. This haunting, this intrusion of what was deathly, was worse than the loneliness that I had known before. Now I felt the necessity for company like someone who has been frightened. It was with an enormous relief that I remembered Marius was coming to stay with me. Perhaps that was why he was coming. Questions were futile.
But there was the whole of the evening in front of me. Alone it was not bearable. Aloneness is insufferable in a world of ghosts. I went out into the street, and walked, rapidly. I found myself going towards Alice’s house. I thought that there I might find Annabelle, or if I did not I would at least find with Alice a world which was familiar to me.
A Garden of Trees Page 25
